When Edwin A. Abbott wrote his strongly allegorical novel “Flatland” in the 1880s, about a two-dimensional land whose inhabitants vehemently and strictly opposed any thought or talk of the possibility of any other realm outside their own, he prophetically described the international science community of the 20th and (thus far, the) 21st centuries.

What the vast majority of the science community does and has been doing is to strictly limit its discoveries and research to its own physical realm, punishing those who dared to venture beyond with marginalization and exile from the scope of their recognition and acceptance.

Like the Flatlanders in Abbott’s story, they strictly refuse to accept the possibility of the existence of any other realm beyond their perceivable and tangible own, which in my humble opinion, isn’t exactly a very scientific approach, and comparable to their predecessors’ attitude in the days before Columbus, when they thought the earth was flat…
No new realms, much less new dimensions to discover. It’s as if they saw their job as building a mental prison (“Matrix”) for their community of believers (for what else have they created than another faith in the dogma, “There is no other”?), restricting their existence to the realm in which they dwell while their bodies remain alive.

They also stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the fact that information does not come about by itself.

The Flatlanders of the 21st century have reached a level of bigotry and hypocrisy that Abbott never would have deemed possible, I’m sure.

So, why is God allowed on the political battlefield, and used as an excuse or incentive for one Nation to exterminate another, while His existence at the same time is strongly denied in that same nation’s sacred halls of higher learning?
Probably because they figure the only thing God is good for is to use Him for their own selfish and mass-murderous plans. They would never ever grant Him credit for having created the vastness of the universe. “No,” they say, “That was coincidence!”
He was the One Who placed them in their high office and gave them the authority to push the red button that would signify the death of untold thousands of (in reality) innocent victims (accused of acts of terrorism, or at least intended ones, of course), but He certainly wasn’t capable of creating the world as it is in the first place.
No, aliens probably did that. They came here gazillions of years ago and left the necessary information for our evolution somewhere in the dust. Let them worry about where they came from… Some even higher race fom yet another galaxy, perhaps. But a Creator from a Realm outside of and even vaster than our physical universe? – “Taboo!”

The credentials of our enlightenment are obvious: “Hey, we are the people who have invented television, i-pads, radar and remote controlled drones to eliminate our enemies. It’s obvious we know what we’re talking about!”
The word adequately used to describe such attitudes is arrogance. And the one to describe that kind of behavior, hypocrisy. “Keep God out of science, but use Him for us to get to use our scientific toys on the lab rats in the Mideast!”

“God may not have created the universe, but He sure made America the ruler of the world” seems to be the consensus of enlightenment cooked up at 58 East 68th Street, New York, along with their hoards of employed think tanks, and preached with evangelistic fervor by their likewise employed media. If God didn’t exist, the warmongers in Gloryland would yet have to invent Him.
Let’s hope for them that their Creator won’t get terribly teed off with their act, and their glory should come falling flat on its face any day soon, reducing their physical stature to their present spiritual one.

In June, immediately after she stopped nursing her 19 months old daughter JiaJia, my Chinese wife became pregnant. As a German citizen, I would have had the right to apply to a special visa for my wife in order to have our child delivered in Germany – evading the current restrictions that didn’t allow her to enter the EU in the first place, such as the condition that she learn German first and absolve a language exam, etc.

However, there was no sign from the “Top” that it was part of our Maker’s plan for us to go there, and at times I still keep wondering why. My life as a musician was easier, more enjoyable and often more inspiring than my current life as an English teacher in a country that may well be the noisiest in the world, and sadly, one of the filthiest.
But having a teacher has its advantages. Other than in the West, where teachers have the image of “The Enemy” in probably 90% of their students, my new profession is a respected one here, and I’ve been told repeatedly, even after this relatively short time, that I’ve touched and affected my students’ lives, and perhaps more so than I was able to – on a personal level – as a musician.

Then there is the political aspect.

I love Western culture, and by Western I mean the same that 95% of the world mean when they say “Western”: The American culture. And I’m not talking about the main stream culture, the Britneys and Lady Gagas that only put a stamp on Don McLean’s fulfilled prophecy about “the day the music died.”
I’m talking about artists of the kind you don’t even hear in Europe unless you’re really into music:
Patty Griffin, Richard Julien and the galore of Christian bands and singers that are basically nobodies in the world of showbiz, but constitute a large part of my inspiration since years: Caedmon’s Call, Jeremy Camp, Jill Phillips and her husband Andy Gullahorn and oodles of others.

I love to listen to their music and sometimes I dream of a world in which I would be able to communicate with people that are even remotely on a similar wavelength to mine, who are able to speak more than the very, very broken English of most of my students (not to mention the majority of the large population around me), but what are the options?
Subscribe to a policy that is based on murdering our fellow humans in far-off lands on grounds that not even the bravest of the outlawed preachers and self-declared “revolutionaries for Christ” dare to doubt even though they’re proven to be totally ridiculous?
Or for that matter… Which of the wars that America – the great leader of our great and glorified Western culture – has fought for the past 6 decades could have really be called justified – from a point of view that even remotely resembles the teachings of Christ?

Korea? Vietnam? — Sure, they wanted to stop Communism. Perhaps at one point they realized that a more effective way would be to apply the slogan, “If you can’t lick’em, join’em” and infiltrate the enemy with McDonalds and Coke, as I see here, the possibly most capitalistic country I’ve ever been to, that’s officially “Communist.”
And if so… for what?

What is it that Big Brother or Uncle Sam is pushing on us? What’s so wonderful that they just can’t stop pushing it down the throat of the rest of the world? Certainly not Patty Griffin…

With a foreign debt of cosmic proportions it’s even ridiculous that the rest of the world keeps looking up to America as its great white hope, a dream and fairy tale that only becomes reality in one place for a limited time, namely a time-span of approximately 100 to 180 minutes on the TV – and movie screens around the world. The American Dream made in Hollywood.
As far as the bitter reality is concerned, all that every administration from Nixon to Obama has been pushing like a heroin dealer dressed up like Santa Claus has been the inevitable “death by overdose:” The world domination of bankruptcy.

What world would possibly be easier to rule than one of bankrupt suckers who don’t have a dime, whose money all went up into thin air, invested in some spoof concocted by some real smart wise asses, only to land all the power thinkable in the hands of a tiny clan who had the balls to lie and lie, and then lie some more, until it made Pinocchio’s nose look like a pimple in comparison?

I don’t know whether this far end of the world is going to be any safer when the shit hits the fan… possibly not. But it’s not just an issue of safety and survival. It’s an issue of dignity. I’d sure hate to wake up in the middle of all those wise asses who actually thought that their country was going to save the world while they were all pumping their tax money into making the exact opposite happen.

They say ignorance is bliss. There’s a lot of ignorance going on all around me right now. They don’t have a clue. But there is yet another extreme, and a whole nuther story, and that’s when people blatantly defy the truth, because they just can’t stand to hear it. And that’s precisely where I don’t want to wake up when the shit hits the fan. And hit the fan it will.

I guess the Boss knows what He’s doing in telling me to better stay put…

The other night we watched the movie “Waiting for Forever” about a boy who had been in love with his childhood girlfriend since they were 10 and officially lost touch when his parents died in a train accident and he and his brother moved to their grandparents. As he grows older, though, he follows the love of his youth wherever her professional career takes her, himself making a living of 3 dollars a day (“on a good day”) as a juggler dressed in pyjamas.
Although this wasn’t the best film I watched of late (for instance, there was the excellent 2010 film “Fair Game,” which gives further insight into the insanity that’s still being perpetrated in Iraq), “Waiting for Forever” moved me most. Not so much because of the plot, but because of the fact that I was watching it with my 28 year old wife who might never get to know the kind of culture that grants a fellow the liberty to make a very unstable living on 3 bucks a day as a juggler, traveling wherever his dream would take him.
Although the boy in the movie was met with heavy criticism from his older brother (a banker), and was being called a stalker, and despite the fact that his kind is a dying breed in the West, at least we have come to know that sort of a culture, while other countries, such as the one I’m currently residing in, probably never will.

Though the culture whose hospitality I’m currently enjoying is by no means an exclusive example of what I’d like to call the “imposed realism” that not only political leaders, but even more so cultural and traditional elders seem to feel obligated to circumcise their offspring’s dreams and ideals with, it is definitely an outstanding example.
You cannot just marry the man or girl you love. Any man that intends to marry is expected to have a house first. My wife has told me of an experience in a Shanghai park where she watched hundreds of elderly couples looking for suitable spouses for their daughters (or sons) with a list of criteria in hand that any potential candidate would have to live up to; criteria primarily based on income.

A juggler making 3 bucks a day wouldn’t stand an chance in hell to get married under that set of conditions. It might me hard in the West, but just about impossible in the East.

Of course, when I was a young lad back in Germany, I got to hear much of the same tune from my folks. Not that they would have expected of me to be able to buy a house before I started messin’ round with the opposite sex, but I was repeatedly advised to “get a good education” to secure a “solid existence” for myself. When I came home one day telling them that I met a group of people who were “foolowing Jesus,” and that one day I would like to do the same, they were naturally horrified.

In the meantime they have accepted my somewhat loose, though not entirely carefree life-style, and my father, having seen his own supposedly “solid existence” and career go down the drain due to fluctuations and instability in the economy has told me since that I made the right choice when I set out to do what I did.
In the West, though, parents have their existence taken care of by retirement insurances, and both my parents are currently better off with their pensions than I am as an English teacher in the Far East, where the only old-age insurance elderly parents have got are their children and their respective incomes, so it’s somewhat understandable that they want their kids to be able to care for them. Many young people live under a lot of pressure because of that responsibility.

Then again, my reasoning is that many things in life are simply beyond our control. Everything is potentially subject to drastic and unexpected changes: death, illness or financial and economic disaster can hit anyone at any time, and what power does anyone really have, to effectively impose their own little reality on anyone in the long run, even their kids?

When Jesus went around luring established young men with flourishing businesses away from their homes and responsibilities telling them He would make them “fishers of men,” certainly He wasn’t met with strong enthusiasm on behalf of those men’s families. For all we know, some of them (like Peter) were even married and possibly had children. What an irresponsible thing to do, to just walk off with a perfect stranger of questionable reputation, Messiah or not…
And from a “realist’s” point of view, that criticism may well be justified: 10 of those young men ended up as martyrs, one committed suicide, and only one died of natural causes on an island where he exiled by the Romans.
Their philosophies and beliefs as expressed in their writings are questionable to this day, and even most “believers” only accept those parts of the Gospels that they can reconcile with the consensus of the imposed realism of our day and age.

The first rule and law is not “to love one another,” but to secure one’s own existence, which, as the Founder of their faith claimed, is no different from what unbelievers adhere to.

So, what would be making a difference then? – Trust.

The people who really made a difference throughout history were those who despite all the seemingly rhymeless reality all around us never ceased to trust that there was Someone ultimately in charge Who not only knew what He was doing, but was also going to take care of them, provide for them, and help them through this mess somehow.

In my own personal experience, I can only confirm that to be true, and I would strive for nothing more than to go down in history as one of those trusters who refuse to accept the artificially imposed realism from those around us – even our loved ones – no matter how justified their reasoning may seem; a person known for the belief that there is a greater Mind than even the wisest of our parents, how ever strange some of the things may first sound that this Great Mind may ask of us – much like a Parent Himself, asking His children to trust Him for the things they do not know, which basically is the essence of faith – the one currency that will outlast any of our existing ones.

The problem is that when you’ve gotten used to this modus operandi of two-by-two, when one of your “motors” flunks out, and you’re stuck again on your own, it reduces your power back to one fifth of what by then you might have gotten used to. So, you feel pretty much reduced to a sausage. Folks who’ve undergone separation will know what I’m talking about. The others won’t have a clue, just as I didn’t until it happened to me.

The power of two is great, but don’t necessarily rely on it as infallible, because as long as there’s another human involved, you simply need to take into consideration that this is only a temporary arrangement, even if you happen to be as lucky to have found someone who meant what they said when they swore, “Till death do us part.” – There is still that uncontrollable death factor. But even that is probably not as painful as when someone you’ve fought life’s battles with for many a season deliberately makes the choice to turn their back on you.

Christ was supposed to have been tempted in all things as we are. Unfortunately we don’t know enough about His 30 years of life prior to His public ministry to tell whether there was ever physically anybody in His life whom He loved so much that they broke His heart when they decided to live their life without Him. All we know is that throughout history He’s had a wife (also referred to as His Bride) that probably put Him through the same thing time and again, which is vividly illustrated in the act of God commanding His prophet Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife as a metaphor of the unfaithfulness of His own Old Testament wife.

Later in the Book of Revelation we find similar metaphors of whores and churches who “sit like a queen,” apparently lacking nothing, and yet not knowing that in God’s eyes they’re naked and destitute of the things that apparently really count to Him.

So, to which degree we as God’s wife and bride have broken His heart is hard to tell. One thing is for sure: when you’ve gone through such pain yourself, you wouldn’t ever want to inflict it on anybody else again. Loyalty all of a sudden becomes paramount, when previously it may have been quite irrelevant. Not only the loyalty of others toward ourselves, but also our own toward others and especially God.

How loyal have we really been?

The only explanation for God putting us through the wringer at times like that, where it seems as though He deliberately devastates us by simply withdrawing the person that meant most to us in the world is that we don’t really have a clue about loyalty, especially not our own, as far as He’s concerned. It’s simply not enough of an issue until we learn to appreciate it by the excruciating pain that can be caused by the absence of it. Only once we realize what pain can be caused by broken loyalty are we able to begin to relate to what it means to God, and do we even begin to realize how often we haphazardly switched loyalties for the sake of some advantage, some shiny fruit on a tree, some compromise for the sake of our personal welfare or benefit, some temptation we couldn’t resist…

Perhaps that’s why it often takes quite long for the pain of betrayal and desertion to linger on: It’s only the beginning of our personal lesson on loyalty. We’re only just starting to see how guilty we have been of the same crime that now we feel we can’t forgive someone else for, and not just once, but probably innumerable times.

Loyalty, like so many other values that used to mean something before our society was taken over by the universally accepted as politically correct Western do-your-own- thing dogma, has gone down the drain in this strange new world order, where the only loyalty that counts is to make sure that you don’t move an inch from the place you’re assigned in the Machine. The System needs to continue to function, and that is your foremost responsibility. Human relations, by comparison, are irrelevant.

“Rubbish!” you say – (Or, if you’re American, you might be prone to use another word that starts with “bull….!”)? Well, good for you, if that’s your reality, and if human relationships still mean enough to you to value them above your personal rank, position or economic advantage. But realistically, you’re part of a shrinking minority. And if you’ve got loyalty and you know what it means, for the sake of God and all that is dear to your own soul, hold on to it with all your might and never underestimate it for a moment. In the end, it may be all that determines whether you lost or won your personal battle in this war.

Or, as the Eagles put it in their song “In A New York Minute” which so aptly portrays what can be the fate of all of us at any time:

“If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail!”

I used to wonder about this passage in Matthew 24: “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Mt.24:37-39).

I used to wonder, “Why, Jesus, what’s so bad about eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage? Why should that merit the end of the world?”

But if you take a closer look at people’s eating, drinking and mating habits, you get the point.

While 40.000 starve daily in one part of the world, obesity is becoming a major disease in another.

While in one place people don’t even have enough drinking water to survive, in another they drink themselves to death.

It’s the imbalance, the selfishness that matters and makes it so ugly… the unwillingness of the rich to share, and their sickening, self-indulging indifference.

And then there’s the mating game. A whole nuther story.

Have you ever frequented a dating site? Like – in a “civilized,” Western country?

I once wrote an entry about the devaluation of human life in reference to what some nations are willing to pay for the corpse of a butcher as compared to what they’re willing to eke out for the corpse of his victim…

Well, you’ll see the devaluation of human life (along with the sheer absence of human intelligence) nowhere as blatantly as on a dating site.

Here they present themselves like merchandise in a supermarket, and mind you, the customers are picky. “Looking for Mr. Right” or “the perfect man” … or woman, the “girl of my dreams, ” etc.

Whereas members of less “developed” countries are a lot more modest. Perhaps one day the world will see the difference between so-called civilization and truly civilized people, among whom respect is still a given, and courtesy not a “Huh, what’s that?”

Not to mention that in the entire process of feverishly trying to obtain the objects of their affection that might quench their burning needs (or lusts?), the most important Factor is – as usual – left out of the equation almost entirely: the Giver of all things in the first place.

Maybe that’s why Jesus said not labour for the meat which perisheth… although everybody of course, keeps doing it, even the most devout of His followers.

Of course, it would be a sacriliege and the epitome of political incorrectness to preach anything different, for man’s greatest religion and god has become the work of his own hands. After all, the work of his own hands is what will earn him those most desired shreds of paper in the universe, which Jesus said we couldn’t serve, if we served God,;and those, in return, will by us foood, drrrink, and will help us to impress the other sex (either by means of taunting our apparel and plastic surgery, or our vehicles, houses and yachts). In short: materialism.

Since everything begins (evolution) and ends (lifeless corpse in coffin) with mere lifeless matter which is supposed to have brought forth itself, the space between the beginning and the end, that which we refer to as life, revolves around the same: lifeless matter. In other words, not really life at all, since the one thing that gives life, as Jesus said, is Spirit (John 6:63), coincidentally, the same stuff that God Himself is made of (John 4:24).

It’s not that I don’t like to eat, drink or am not totally amazed by the opposite sex. Nor do I try to pretend to come across as some sort of spiritual wonder child, since I’m subject to the same desires and needs as everybody else.

It’s just that the way we go about it and still have the nerve to call “civilized,” to me comes across as rather barbaric.

If that’s what brought on the flood (along with many other evils that find their modern counterparts), then let it rain, Lord, let it rain!

Being a politically correct Christian with a politically correct God and Christ these days means to refrain from separatist tirades indicating that there should be any sort of division between true believers – Christ’s genuine disciples, and the rest of the world.
“The world,” that mass of people Jesus told His disciples they were not a part of, if existent at all, are always the Hottentots in far-off countries who wouldn’t be able to afford our bestsellers on Pop-Spirituality in the 21st century anyways.

So, let me be politically incorrect here once again and heat up the old forgotten and despised doctrine of John 15:19 and harp a little bit on that: Is there such a thing as “the world” in the sense of something we should not be part of, if we call ourselves followers of the Maker of that statement, or is it just a myth, and we’re all so super goodie-good and moving toward the point of enlightenment in our evolution which will usher in universal peace without the Almighty having to resort to any of the drastic measures He announced in the portions of His Book that are carefully being avoided by popular Christian authors?

Of course, it’s natural to want to erase any existing lines of division between yourself and your target audience when that audience is supposed to eke out 30 bucks for your latest compilation of divine wisdom. But are those potential readers really being helped and enlightened by the illusion that all is at peace, the Devil’s on vacation and there is no actual spiritual warfare going on?

Progress, in the eyes of the liberal, widely accepted brand of the Christian faith, seems to be equivalent with the eradication of any and all lines of separation between them and the world, and thus it’s being drilled into our minds for the umpteenth time that “We are,” indeed, “the world…”

Personally, I think I’d rather watch “Matrix” one more time, for some inside scoop of what’s really going on.

One of the reasons why I do believe in the existence of such a thing Jesus called “the world” (that I don’t feel I belong to), is that I have found out that there is, in fact, also a distinction between lies and truth.
Now, for many folks in our success-oriented world, that distinction is nearly non-existent. They’re so used to lying, they can’t tell the difference anymore.
It wouldn’t occur to them to call anything their political leader or anyone says on TV or anywhere, for that matter, an untruth or a lie, because it would mean that they would have to be more careful about their own truthfulness (or lack thereof), and who wants to pay that sort of a price?

So if mass murderers like Charles Manson or warmongering Nobel peace prize winning presidents (see why you can’t be serious about being part of this world?) want to go on and on about how much they love Jesus, we’re all cool with it, because that sort of hypocrisy is what we call “freedom” here, in the liberated West, and watch out, we’re soon coming to a town near you to liberate you, too!

I’ve been thinking a bit more about James Cameron and his apparently opposing stance toward Christianity, as conveyed through his last two motion pictures, and – although I don’t know much about his ideological background – thought I’d have to say a few more things in his defense and perhaps of others like him:

The keyword is Bush. What makes the whole matter of trying to save the face of Christianity a Sisyphus task is the fact that George Bush claimed to be a Christian (whether he still does is irrelevant, since his decisions do no longer determine the lives and deaths of millions), and posed as one of Christianity’s most stout defenders and protagonists.

I’m just wondering whether we, as Christians, should just willingly accept any type of famous personality and figure of power to speak for all of us, when a little bit of healthy discernment might have easily alarmed us that something about his actions did not jibe with his words (much as is the case with the current President, but without all the embarrassing pseudo-religious ado about it).

Now, Christianity already had bad cards in the eyes of a largely brainwashed public who’s been hearing and reading the same old stuff about the crusades, the inquisition, Catholic child abuse, weird Christian cults, etc., etc. for decades, but George Bush was just about the straw that broke the camel’s back. (The camel being Christianity’s image in the world).

Anybody with half a brain and enough wits to put two and two together could figure out that if Christianity was the religion that someone like George Bush professed to be a champion of, then it had to be the epitome of evil.

I mean, who wants to go to Heaven with the prospect of folks like that up there, right?

The other problem being that the vast majority of Christians worldwide swallowed the bait and believed all the books that came out about how George Bush was the man who brought faith into the White House, etc.

But as I have stated before, Christians often make the grave mistake of underestimating their Enemy. It would never occur to them to what lengths the Devil goes in order to fool them, not until it’s way too late.

The camouflage is so perfect, that some now even see him as the good guy, and Obama as the bad guy who wrecked the country since he’s in office, when there is really no difference at all between Bush and Obama, except that Obama can do without all the Pseudo-Christian ado…

God is not the author of confusion, but the other guy, who is the author of confusion, is doing a magnificent job here. Though it doesn’t really take brains as much as sticking to what Jesus said and a little bit of the Holy Ghost to be able to look through the facade. That again, is a price too high to pay for most believers. And as long as that’s the case, there will always be folks like James Cameron who will come across a lot more like the good guys than all those gun-totin’ “Christians.”

The problem is they haven’t recognized their real enemy, and while they’re staring into the high noon sun, struttin’ out into the street to lay down their supposed opponent with one swift blow from the hip, their real enemy is shooting them in the back from the roof… Having learned nothing from a century of Hollywood tutoring…

Instead of spending trillions on blasting third world countries back to Kingdom come, they should have invested a little more in the sort of weaponry that really makes a difference: the white-hot sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and some of those gifts of the Spirit like discernment, and some live communication with their true Commander-In Chief, Who could have told them that the phony they’re sacrificing their sons for is a fake…

By their fruits ye shall know them. And the sad testimony in all this is, that those who don’t share our faith sometimes have greater discernment and a better sense to distinguish between good fruit and a rotter than we do.

Here’s a link to an article from 2008 that paints a different picture than the icon of “St. George W.” we’re all supposed to fall for: